An Earth-friendly way to easily upgrade and fix your own computer

So the idea is to use a 3D printer that’s as good as or better than
the one used to prototype the laptop’s parts (the Mendel90) but
without costing $600 to $700 or above, because it is necessary to buy
ten of them in order to have the parts 3D-printed within a
reasonable timeframe (i.e., less than three years). Hence I will have
to do something like place an order to some parts supplier which
literally starts with “Hi, can I have 10,000 M3 hex nuts, please?”

I am however having one of those existential moments, even beyond the
“10,000 hex nuts” surreality. To recap, I now have two Chinese 3D
printers: $200 + shipping for an Anycubic with a Melzi 2.0 controller,
and $150 + shipping for a pile of parts that has me deeply embarrassed
that I even thought that it would work. I am so embarrassed that I
did not follow my own advice that I have begun writing up a special
page on Mechanical Rigidity on the reprap
wiki, so that it burns
into my brain and I never forget, ever again.

The Anycubic is a combination of good and bad bits: injection-molded
X-ends that had warped as they came out of their molds, creating
side-loading of the bearings and bending the Z rods. This I can
tolerate. Just. The all-metal carriage arrangement is… okay.
However it’s one of these “direct-drive” motors with no gearing
whatsoever, where the filament gear is mounted directly onto the
NEMA17. After seeing how good a Mendel90 is with its 4:1 gear ratio
and hobbed bolt I really do not like non-geared direct-drive
printhead arrangements, but for $200 + shipping I was prepared to try
it out. The NEMA17 itself is low torque, and the controller board can
only deliver 1.3 A and is maxed out. Even at 50 mm/sec it skips with
this familiar “tkk, tkk” sound that results often in an entire layer
being skipped or not printed properly… meaning that at that
particular point in the object the entire part could literally snap in
two under even the slightest pressure during use. I have to sit here
literally for two to three hours, listening out for that “tkk tkk”
sound, responding immediately and carefully pushing the filament by
hand - as the printhead is moving rapidly back and forth - into the
extruder.

The Anycubic is basically what I’m using - because it’s here now - to
try to rescue the “pile of parts” bought on Taobao. I’ve taken the
opportunity to turn the X-carriage rods from a vertical to a
horizontal arrangement, placing the nozzle as close to the centre
between the two rods as i dare. What that means is that gravity takes
care of keeping the carriage down (yes there is travel-play in the
bearings: about 0.25 mm) and also any rotation of the carriage (caused
by the travel play in the bearings) is reduced, not amplified. With
a vertical rods arrangement, that travel play of “only” 0.25 mm is
amplified by the fact that the nozzle is often a good 50 to 80 mm away
from the centre line of the two rods. Thus that play of “only” 0.25 mm
can easily often be amplified to a whopping 2 mm! I simply do not
understand why people do not understand basic mechanics. Vertical
carriage arrangements are fine if you use high quality rails, not
cheap-ass linear bearings that rattle around with up to 0.5 mm of
travel under rotation!

Why am I even spending my time on this? Well, it’s so that I can give
this pile of parts to my associate here in Taiwan, but also because I
want to get back into the flow of doing 3D design again, after taking
a break for over a year. I have to begin adjusting the libre laptop
casework again to fit the new PCBs at some point, and I would like to
be “in the zone” when it comes to it, as they like to say.

Existential Moment (1)

And that brings me to Existential Moment Number One. I returned
recently to the reprap forum after a break for a year, and it feels
like it’s a sleep-walking ghost town. Sure, there are good people
there, and it’s really nice to see some of the familiar experienced
faces helping out the newcomers, not least because I can learn things
from those people as well. But I didn’t really know what I was
feeling was wrong until I learned yesterday that reprappro - the
company that was started by one of the founders of the entire open 3D
reprap community - shut down only last year whilst they still were in
the black.

This is extremely relevant to the EOMA68 Project and to Open Hardware
in general: it’s a warning shot across the bows. Basically, reprappro
shut down because the market is so saturated with crowdfunded efforts
and Chinese clones that their expertise, on which those crowdfunded
efforts and Chinese clones critically depend, is completely
drowned out. You can see evidence of this in the number of threads
along the lines of “I Bought A China 3D Printer Clone Has Anyone Else Also
Got One I’m Designing Totally New Parts To Replace The Rubbish I Got”
and “I Bought A China 3D Printer Controller Board Clone, Its Firmware
Is Illegal Has Anyone Reverse-Engineered It?”

You bought a $20 PCB with illegal, copyright-violating software on it
and you’re asking people who normally charge $200/hour for
reverse-engineering expertise to spend WEEKS of their time… for
free?

The lesson here for all of us is a repetition and thus a reminder of
my sponsor’s business model (ThinkPenguin). ThinkPenguin funded the
libre laptop because they want their customers to have the option to
be able to buy a laptop that doesn’t spy on people. That easily cost
them around $50,000 USD in my time (actually, the rent on the
apartment in Den Haag plus living costs). The latest illustration that
this is not nonsense, that it’s a genuine threat to your privacy in a
completely undetectable manner, was reported on two days ago.

ThinkPenguin’s business model is to do all the research into hardware
that “just works” so you don’t have to. Sure, you can go buy
cheap clones and knock-offs, or you can buy the exact same part (the
one that ThinkPenguin funded from their profits to make sure its
firmware is entirely libre) from someone else at a cheaper price, but
in doing so you undermine your own chances of being able to buy
libre hassle-free computers and peripherals in the future. The
classic example is the AR9271 USB-WIFI dongle. This is the one for which
ThinkPenguin spent two years walking Atheros through the process of
releasing the firmware. Buying from their website supports their
long-term efforts to free up 802.11ac. Buying from their sponging
competitors does not.

Existential Moment (2)

A high-quality 3D printer I would love to be able to use for the job
of doing all 5,000+ parts for the laptop, is the Ultimaker-2. The
build quality is so superb on this printer that it is easily capable
of handling 150 mm/sec speeds and still produce good enough quality
parts, thus ensuring that the time taken to print all the parts (if a
single printer is used) is only three years if we assume an eight-hour
day.

You may need to blink a couple of times on that one, and re-read that
sentence. Yes, really, I did say three years for a single printer.
So that means it would be necessary to get 10 printers in order to
print all the parts in a reasonable timeframe. If you’ve not seen how
much an Ultimaker-2 costs, it’s around $1000. So that would be $10,000
USD in 3D printers. I cannot possibly justify such expenditure. The
actual filament itself needeed is only somewhere around $1500 to $2000
USD.

Now the experiment in buying a China Taobao wannabe knock-off for $150
plus $40 shipping to Taiwan starts to make sense, doesn’t it? Except
precisely because it’s a clone made by people who “copy copy copy”
with absolutely zero engineering design expertise whatsoever, and then
unfortunately tinker, or worse, ship stuff that you didn’t actually
ask or pay for (but you’re not a Chinese national so have no legal
recourse to recover your money), what I’ve received is basically…
80% junk.

So, I am at this weird cross-point where in order to fulfill the pledges
that people have entrusted me to do, I am - somewhat unbelievably -
going to have to return to designing a 3D printer - one that has the
advantage of the lower-cost of the parts that can be sourced from
China, without the huge turn-around times and costs of shipping to the
USA or to Europe, but with the engineering expertise from a Western
mindset and with the approval and input from the reprap community and
other sources, all of which is completely lacking from the average
Chinese “clone-shop.” Times ten. Hence the surreality.

Now, if anyone has any better ideas, now is a really, really good time
to raise them (on the mailing
list, so that
they can be discussed). Just the fact that ten printers are needed
is enough, for example, to justify starting an entirely new
crowdfunding campaign just for the 3D printer. Ideas here include
providing it to people across the world, so that they can help out
with the actual printing of the laptop’s parts, but more than that
they will become established and reputable suppliers for replacement
parts, and could register on, for example, 3DHubs to make some money
from selling 3D printing services. Some of those people could be
subsidised from the available funds, but it would be nice if people
could actually buy the printer themselves.

The key here is that both the quality of the prints and the speed
have to be really above-average, and using high-quality PLA is
essential. The parts are really quite complex (some of them are 260 mm
long and have to be printed across the diagonal of a 200 x 200 mm bed)
and there are lot of them to do (5,000+ in total). Even if ten
printers are used that’s still almost FOUR MONTHS of eight hours per day
3D printing per printer.

And no, using a network-3D-printing house is not okay, because the
quality of the PLA from such places simply cannot be trusted. It’s
Faberdashery’s PLA or nothing. I’ve shared some of the nightmare
horror stories of low-quality PLA with people on the list already.

Other Projects and News

A huge surprise to me is to learn that these updates I’ve been writing
do actually seem to be inspiring people, both to contact Crowd Supply
and set up their own open hardware project and also to learn about
some of the things to avoid, that I in turn have learned from various
other open hardware projects over the past decade and more. For
example, the
ZeroPhone developer
(hello!) has been reading these updates and so has deliberately
sourced parts that are easy to obtain and commonly available in
China. Yay!

Also, amazingly, we have not one new EOMA68 card that people are
planning to develop, but two! One using the Nextthing.co GR8 (which
is actually an Allwinner A13 die combined with a 512 MB DDR3 in what’s
known as a “Multi-Chip Module”), and the other using the Freescale/NXP
iMX7, which has tamper-resistance detection built-in.

Then also I have been asked by my sponsor to work with a Chinese
router company to investigate creating a QCA9531-based libre router
(the QCA9531’s firmware is entirely libre). This has its own
page and since
that page was last updated I have made the decision to split this PCB
down into two parts. The first will be pretty much the QCA9531
reference design, as-is, except with a feedback loop on a header to
get the USB, UART, and some GPIO off (and then back again, for a
stand-alone router). The second will actually be the planned “Mini
Desktop,” this time with a four-port USB hub and an HDMI converter IC
instead of VGA. The interesting bit will be when both PCBs are put
(stacked) into a single box, with a 14-pin header connecting the two.
That then becomes a really interesting and powerful product.
Actually, three products, all of which could go onto the next
crowdfunding page.

Lastly, there is a status update on the mailing list: basically, I am
“busy waiting” for the factory to deliver new versions of the PCBs
that need pre-production testing. But, finally, please, I do have to
emphasise: I really do need help with the 3D printing. It’s a big
committment: it’s somewhat impractical to set up ten 3D printers in an
apartment here in Taiwan. Do join the mailing
list and make
yourselves known.

Micro Desktop Housing for Computer Card

This is a Micro Desktop base unit and power supply unit with a beautiful laser-cut stack of 3mm plywood panels that creates an aesthetically attractive tiny base unit for your Computer Cards. Excludes Computer Card, keyboard, mouse and VGA monitor.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $12 Worldwide

$450

PIY Laptop Housing Kit for Computer Card

This Print-It-Yourself (PIY) kit includes all the parts, cabling and
boards (main, power, and controller, assembled and tested), and
battery, charger, keyboard, LCD, and CTP-LCD for trackpad that are
needed to build a complete Libre Laptop once you 3D print the
enclosure from the freely available GPLv3+ licensed plans. Excludes
Computer Card.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $25 Worldwide

$500

PFY Laptop Housing Kit for Computer Card

This Printed-For-You (PFY) kit has everything needed to create a full
EOMA68 Laptop, including a 3D printed set of casework parts,
bamboo plywood panels, tested and assembled PCBs, cables, battery,
charger, keyboard, LCD, and CTP-LCD for trackpad. Available in a
variety of colors and materials. Excludes Computer Card.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $25 Worldwide

Material / Color

$1,200

Completely Assembled Laptop + Computer Card

A meticulously hand-assembled and fully-tested laptop. Includes your choice of EOMA68-A20 Computer Card and 3D-printed casework.

For those people who would like the opportunity to meet the designers
and have them personally go over the project's development, history,
future direction and much more, a week's time can be made available to
meet with you personally, to do a hands-on workshop to help you (and
any number of additional attendees) through the process of putting
together your own fully-functioning laptop and even take you through
the process of building and installing the software. Also included
will be one Laptop with a Computer Card which will be assembled
on-site. You must provide travel, accommodation, tools and a suitable
workshop and presentation space. Contact us directly for details.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free Worldwide Shipping

Material / Color

$20

PCMCIA/EOMA68 Breakout Board

One PCMCIA/EOMA68 Breakout Board with one surface mount PCMCIA header, and tracks to some convenient 2.54-mm-spaced through-holes. Added by popular demand, for access, tinkering, development work, testing, etc.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $10 Worldwide

$35

Pass-through Card

A simple card that takes in HDMI and USB and passes them on. Turns a Laptop Housing into a portable, battery-powered dock for your smartphone, USB-HDMI dongle computer, and tablet, or a second screen, keyboard, and mouse for your existing laptop or desktop PC.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $10 Worldwide

$15

USB + HDMI Cable Set for Standalone Operation

Includes a Micro HDMI Type D cable and 3-way USB-OTG Host-Charger cable tested and known to work with EOMA68 Computer Cards. These are the cables you need to run a Computer Card as a standalone device without the need for a housing. Also useful with the Micro Desktop or Laptop Housing to add a second screen and extra USB port.